Sunday, November 1, 2015

Today
was about the power of words, which can harm and hurt so easily.

This
blog, like always, is open to comments and one of my friends left a fairly
detailed one in response to a single sentence from last week: the one about the
noisy child in the theater.

I
won't get into the details, as it's all water under the bridge, but they took
exception to my expectation that I'd enjoy a movie at a theater full of young families
with the possibility of so much noisy disruption. I admit I didn't expect it to
be all that quiet during the film, but neither did I expect one to take their
child to produce so much noise for so long without any decisive action on the
part of the parent.

The
comment, though not intentionally vicious, threw me into a
emotional spiral which left me in a tizzy all day long. It made me question myself
as a person, in terms of how I viewed other people, as well as how well I was
doing in all aspects of my life recently. The lack of progress last week for my
business, combined with other issues on my mind, meant that today's comment kicked me
where it hurt and left me reeling in an emotional low, for almost the
entire day.

Such are the power of words.

Fortunately,
my own response-comment that I left, combined with the e-mail I sent my friend, allow me
to fully explain myself so that he understood where I was coming from. I also
was able to understand exactly where he was coming from and our communications
meant we reached a mutual understanding amicably, without condemnation on either
side for our actions.

Such
is the power of friendship.

In
a rare move, I deleted both comments from last week's blog, but only at the suggestion
of my friend. As I said, it's now water under the bridge and it's not worth having it hanging over our
heads: we both learned something today and I'm feeling much better now writing this entry that I did on that
particular day...

Oct 27 –Science Of Selling

Gadzooks–
I sold my Amiga!

As
I mentioned last week, I listed a few things on eBay this month to clear some
space - about a dozen cubic feet or so, overall. I was hopeful that some of it
would sell for what I asked, but I had no idea that my need I would go so
quickly, even given the more-than-fair price I was asking for everything that
was include. I've spent a fair bit on it over the years and I had a good idea
what it was worth, even today, 20+ years after first purchasing it.

A
lucky buyer jumped on it after only a day on eBay, using BuyItNow and paying
immediately. I rushed around last night to pack everything into a large, sturdy
box to send it to the states. All told, the box was as big as a mini fridge and
weighed almost 60 pounds, necessitating some help this morning from my amazing girlfriend to wrangle it into a vehicle and down to the post office first thing
before work. I was tickled that my estimate of its shipping costs were accurate
to within one dollar given its weight and size – how’s that for accuracy given
just a scale and a tape measure!

So
I'm pretty damn happy, in that the buyer will get a lot of good use out of my still
perfectly-working Amiga and I get some money out of the deal. There’s no way I would have been able to get any more
use out of the machine, given how busy I am now and it makes me feel good that
someone is going to give it a good home at last, instead of having such a great
system languish unused in a few storage boxes.

I
still have a large single lot of Amiga games for sale, as well as a few collectibles
that have decent value, but even if those don't sell this week, I will count it
as a success, especially as eBay's special offer this month was to let users
list items without any additional fees added if they sold - in
effect, I sold it for free!

How sweet is that, as a final note to my Amiga’s decades-long journey with me?

Oct 28 – Privilege

I’m
not a fan of the 1%.

Actually,
let me rephrase that: I'm not a fan of those people whose wealth makes them
ignorant of how the rest of the world lives and works and functions in general.
Having money should not mean that you become completely detached from the
reality that most of the rest the world lives in, in terms of the value of a
dollar.

That's
why Donald Trump sticking his foot in his mouth this week is so poignant:

Everything
is relative, I understand: the cost of a meal at a restaurant to me, while not
exorbitant, would be beyond reach of some of this country's poorest people and
while I don't eat out more than a few times a week, some people don't bat an
eye at taking one or two meals a day out of their wallet instead of out of a
brown paper bag.

Donald
Trump probably doesn't even know what his groceries cost. Nor does he care.

Oct 29 – Costume Day!

It
was a magic time at work today!

I
wore a medieval outfit, cobbled together from several different outfits that I
have purchased over the years. Unfortunately, one of them seems to have had a
boot cover gone missing, so I had to improvise by wrapping a similar-colour belt
around the other boot. I think it looks pretty good:

We
had our usual contest at work and while I didn't win this year, I was told that
I was a close second for the detail work I did, including the foam LARP sword
that I wielded. I think next year all go high-tech again, using my phone( my new one, not my old broken Samsung )
in combination with the costume to create some sound or voice affects. I have
yet to decide what I will do, however.

It'll
probably have a cape though; I really like capes.

One
thing I can't do anymore is indulge in these sweet treats that are part and
parcel of the Halloween experience, at least for younger trick-or-treaters.
While I nibbled on a total of one or two candies throughout the day, other
people gladly dug into their candy bags throughout the day. It's funny how
while I miss the experience, I don't crave the candies themselves anymore, even
the ones that used to be my favorites such as Mars bars or peanut butter cups.

I
think it's more about the experience now, of enjoying the costumes and stepping
outside oneself to become someone else, for a little while at least - kind of
like being an actor, I guess.

Oct 30 – Hot Water

Kettles
are passé, nowadays.

Given
how people keep getting busier every year, who has time to wait for water to
boil? Not to mention keeping the kettle full, the mess it makes if it's not
well-designed and the unfortunate tendency for one to run out of water if a few
people want to have hot drinks of the same time.

Enter
the countertop hot water dispenser - they're amazing!

I
had one at work years ago, as part of the water cooler that the company
provided in the employee area at the back the store. I loved being able to just
pull the switch down and have instant hot water for tea or hot chocolate or
soup… whatever you desired. No waiting!

While
that sort of comedians comes at a fair premium of a price, if you are a careful
shopper then you can get something similar for your home. A few days ago, I
espied a 4-litre( a sizable capacity!
)dispenser on sale at NewEgg.ca, and when I looked closer, I saw that the price
dropped dramatically when you ordered two units: they came to only $35 each,
with free shipping! So I grabbed a pair of them, fast, as the price seemed just
too good to be true - most of the dispensers I had been looking at were at least
3 to 4 times that price!

Checking
back today, I saw that NewEgg was sold
out of the heaters – I had been smart to purchase them so quickly! When the
units arrived today, I unpacked the one, setting it up easily within a few
minutes and soon it was happily boiling water, finishing the full 4L in about
20 minutes.

A
quick test confirm that the water was indeed gloriously hot and dispensed instantly
from the spout at the push of a button – no more waiting for tea on a busy
morning before work! My sister fell in love with the dispenser immediately, as
she is a fan of hot soups and not having to wait for the water is especially
valuable to her.

While
more expensive units have timers and other features which this one does not, I
did add a simple external timer to turn it off during the day and on again for
a few hours once we're both home again from work, thus saving a fair bit of
power that would be used to keep it hot all day unnecessarily. I'm really
pleased with the purchase and I see it saving us both a lot of time.

Not
to mention not costing us much in the first place!

Oct 31 – HALLOWEEN!

I
don’t know why, but I’m really excited about Halloween this year.

Probably
because for the last few years, I haven’t gone out on the actual night at all. Huh – that’s simple
enough.

The
day didn't start out so well though. It was raining heavily and since I was up
early, thanks to the gusting noise outside, I decided to get some laundry
started before anyone else this morning.

On
my way to do laundry, I saw this:

Thinking
quickly, I trotted back to my apartment( I
can’t run, thanks to a gimpy knee tendon ) and grabbed an old oversized
towel to stuff in the gap under the front door were all the water was flooding
in. I then sat there to babysit the door until the superintendent could arrive,
as anyone silly enough to enter through the front would let all the water
gushed into the lobby instead of simply trickling through the towel as it was
currently doing.

I
ended up sitting there for almost an hour, as the super came and went to try
and find pumps and or other paraphernalia. As it turned out, the drain grates
at the front were simply blocked with leaves, a stupid oversight that
apparently the rental company for the building knew about but hadn't taken
corrective measures for yet - resulting in a costly flood.

Major
disaster averted, I spent a good part of my day doing things around the
apartment, some of them business related but most of them simply catching up
from my week.

Dinnertime
was a delicious pizza with my girlfriend, after which we headed out to attend a
Halloween party in the North end of the city. She was dressed as a witch,
whereas I had a rather different getup – check out these party pics:

While
I thought my outfit was pretty obvious, only a few people got it right away.
I would have thought the ‘I Heart Jar Jar’ tag or the Walt Disney Deathstar
logo would have given it away, but perhaps it was a little too dark at the
party for people to make the connection:

Also,
in case you didn’t notice it, one of the images from the party collage is of a homemade
electric chair( non-working!
)complete with flashing LED lights when you throw the switch. Incredible! As
you can see from the decorations, the hosts go all-out for Halloween and I have
to say it was even better than last year…

I
change mine every 3-6 months, depending on the criticality of the password: my
banking, Google and Facebook get updated more regularly than say, access to
some online shopping sites. All the same, I consider myself pretty secure
online, with long / complex passwords, two-step authentication and good data
practices( not checking things like bank
accounts over public wifi )to keep myself safe. It's especially good idea
when you're in another city.

Which
is why I was surprised to get THIS message this afternoon:

As
October is National Cyber Security Month, I find it a little ironic that I received this warning message, but I’m
grateful that Google’s systems know my login habits well enough to wonder what
I was suddenly doing in New York, screwing up a password attempt. Seeing as I
hadn't been in New York since October 2014, there's only one explanation: someone
scooped some of my data while I was there.

Needless
to say, I changed my password for that account immediately. I also double-checked
some of my other accounts that I had used while I was in New York this time
last year, just in case my brief time spent on public Wi-Fi had resulted in
some of my data being captured that I was not aware of while it was happening.
It could've been at a public coffee shop or perhaps while I was killing time at
the airport; it's hard to say, as one doesn't usually keep track of such
things.

Which
is why it's important to have good data practices, so that you stay as safe as
possible when you're not thinking about people trying to steal your data while
you're getting on with your life. I'll rent a little bit more about this next
week, but for now if you're reading this, think about changing some of your passwords
if you haven't done so recently…

On
another note, today marks that 8th year since my family and I moved
to BC. It's had its up and downs, drama and disaster, but overall things are
looking better now than they have in quite a few years. Personally, I'm doing
much better than I was in Ontario and I'm hopeful that the other areas of my
life will catch up soon.

It's been a pretty full week,
which turned out really well, in the end: in addition to the wonderful
Halloween celebrations, three out of four of my Clear-Stuff-Out-Of-My-Too-Small-Place
sold on eBay, so I am really pleased! I'll have more room and some more money
in my pocket, and some lucky people out there are going to get a hold of some
really good things of mine that I cherished for many years. Going into
November, I'm looking to keep things positive!